Christmas Reconsidered

You can tell by the amount of vitriol from the other reviews that there's a tremendous amount at stake here! What the "turn and burn" Catholic haters don't realize is you can't simply write off 1500 of Christian history. The ideas that Christian holidays are simply Pagan holidays are the product of overzealous protestants (and I'm not Roman Catholic by the way) and poor scholarship. The 19th century was notorious for bad scholarship concerning folklore and religious matters. This attitude of "Christian Holidays = Pagan Holidays" is what's fueling the Wiccan and Neopagan explosion. People are figuring (erroneously) that Christians simply stole the Pagans religion. I challenge every Christian reading this to buy 10 copies and give them away. The simple fact of the matter is, historians like Professor Ronald Hutton of Oxford have discovered that many things thought to be Pagan in Christianity are actually not. We don't know when Christ was born. There are three reasons the ancient Christians decided to celebrate Christ's birth on Dec. 25th. One reason was the Roman Empire recognized Dec. 26gth as day as the birth of Mithras. In protest, persecuted Christians began to celebrate the birth of Jesus on the day before. Good for them! Let us continue to celebrate it on this day if for no other reason than Pagans can't push us around! Another reason Christians derived this day to be the birth of Christ is that Jewish tradition held that a prophet died on the day he was conceived. Since we know Christ was crucified during Passover, which is close to March, counting down 9 months would take us to December. The third reason (and perhaps the most important) was that the Jewish festival of C'hanukka was celebrated for the very first time on what would hae been the equivalent of Dec. 25th on the Western calendar. C'hannuka is a festival of lights. We Christians too, celebrate Christmas with many lights. Christmas is simply our C'hanukka, just as Easter is our Passover. Christians should celebrate Christmas for these three reasons if nothing else. I imagine the Jack Chick types think the Jesuits "got to Woodrow", and that's to be expected. It takes an extreme amount of courage to admit you're wrong, and Woodrow had courage. It also took courage to face the lions down.

First, let me say I am not a Roman Catholic or part of the "conspiracy". Jack Chick readers will be disappointed. I became a Wiccan in my teens because of the things people like Hislop were writing! Eventually I learned the errors of these views...but not until many years later when I was in my 30's. I don't think people realize one iota how damaging and erroneous it is to paint the Roman Catholic Church as a Pagan religion. You can't seperate 1500 years of Christian history from Catholicism. It's like taking flour out of bread. The truth is many of the customs in Catholicism that overzealous Christians, Athiests and Neopagans try to lable as Pagan actually arose during the Christian era, and were not continuation of Pagan practices! You should also read "Stations of the Sun" by Professor Ronald Hutton. Christmas (Christ Mass) is not a Pagan religion. The early Christians calcuated that the first Chanukka was celebrated on Dec. 25th by the Western Calendar. They were celebrating it as ealry as the 2nd Century, before Christianity was legalized in Rome. If you read the story of the first Chanukka in the historical book of I Maccabees, you'll see it arose over a Jewish priest who REFUSED to be a Pagan! Christians also remember Christ's birth because of a Jewish tradition that held a prophet died during the ninth month after his death. Since Christ died around March, counting down nine months puts it at December. I applaud Mr. Woodrow for writing this book. It took great courage to admit he was wrong. I hope will strive to make people aware of the truth. The rest of the Christians who have adopted the Jack Chick/Hislop mindest (and even Chick celebrates Easter and Christmas!) need to realize this too.

One of Ralph's best books yet, Christmas Reconsidered silences the hateful rhetoric from the anti-Christmas crowd. This rhetoric is less concerned about "truth" and more concerned about passing judgment on Christians who choose to exercise their liberty based on Romans 14 to keep days that they deem fit to keep. Ralph Woodrow pleads for sanity and reason in the X Mas debate, especially for those who use psuedo-research to show that X Mas was "pagan." Rev. Richard Lee